The Little Lady of Lagunitas by Richard Henry Savage

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The land is one vast graveyard. The women who mourn husbands and
lovers stray over fields of strife, and wonder where the loved one
sleeps. Friend and foe, "in one red burial blent," are lying down
in the unbroken truce of death.

Atlanta's struggle against the restless Sherman has been only
wasted valor, a bootless sacrifice. Her terrific sallies, lightning
counter-thrusts, and final struggles with the after-occupation, can
be traced in the general desolation, by every step of the horrible
art of war.

Here, by the grave of his intrepid comrade, Henry Peyton reviews
the past four years. His scars and wasted frame tell him of many
a deadly fray, and the dangers of the insane fight for State rights.

The first proud days of the war return. Hopes that have failed
long since are remembered. The levy and march to the front, the
thousand watch-fires glittering around the unbroken hosts, whose
silken-bordered banners tell of the matchless devotion of the
women clinging blindly to the cause.

Peyton thinks now of the loved and lost who bore those flags,
to-day furled forever, to the front, at Bull Run, Shiloh, the Seven
Days, Groveton, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Chickamauga, and
Spottsylvania.

The foreign friends in Europe, the daring rovers of the sea
who carried the Stars and Bars from off New York to Singapore and
far Behring Straits. What peerless leaders. Such deep, sagacious
statesmen. The treasures of the rich South, the wealth of King
Cotton, all wasted uselessly. A popular devotion, which deeply
touched the magnanimous Grant in the supreme hour of victory, has
been lavished on the altar of the Confederacy where Davis, Lee,
and Jackson were enthroned. Fallen gods now, but still majestic
and yet revered.

Peyton thinks with an almost breaking heart of all these sacrifices
for the Lost Cause. By his friend's grave he feels that an awful
price has been paid for the glories of the short-lived Confederacy.

The noble-hearted Virginian dares not hope that there may yet be
found golden bands of brotherhood to knit together the children of
the men who fought under gray and blue. Frankly acknowledging the
injustice of the early scorn of the Northern foe, he knows, from
glances cast backward over the storied fields, the vigor of the
North was under-estimated. The men of Donelson, Antietam, Stone
River, Vicksburg, awful Gettysburg, of Winchester, and Five Forks,
are as true and tried as ever swung a soldier's blade.

He has seen the country's flag of stars stream out bravely against
the tide of defeat. If American valor needs a champion the men
who saw the "Yankees" at Seven Pines, Gaines Mill, Marye's Heights,
and holding in fire and flame the batteries of Corinth and Knoxville,
will swear the embittered foes were worthy of each other.

The defeated Confederate veteran, as he plucks a rose from the grass
growing over the gallant Valois, bitterly remembers the useless
sacrifices of the whole Southern army to the "Virginia policy." A
son of the "old State" himself, he can feel now, in the sorrow and
silence of defeat, that the early triumphs of the war were wasted.
The great warlike generation was frittered away on the Potomac.

Devoted to Lee, he still mourns the lost months of the fall of '61,
when, flushed with triumph, the Confederates could have entered
Washington. Then Maryland would have risen "en masse." Foreign
lands would have been won over. An aggressive policy even in 1862,
after the Peninsula, might have changed the final result. The dead
Californian's regrets for the abandonment of all effort in the
Pacific, the cutting-off and uselessness of the great trans-Mississippi
region, all return to him in vain sorrow.

By Maxime Valois' grave, Peyton wonders if the battle-consecrated
blood of the sons has washed away the sins of the fathers. He
knows not of the brighter days, when the past shall seem a vision
of romance. When our country will smile in peace and brotherhood,
from ocean to ocean. Sadly he uncovers his head. He leaves Maxime
Valois lying in the proud silence of the soldier's grave--"dead on
the field of honor."

To New Orleans Colonel Peyton repairs. On making search, he finds
that Judge Valois has not survived the collapse of the Confederacy.
His only son is abroad, in Paris. The abandoned plantations and
family property are under the usual load of debt, taxes, and all
the legal confusion of a change of rulers.

Peyton thanks the dead soldier in his heart for the considerable
legacy of his unused balances. He is placed beyond immediate
necessity. He leaves the land where the Southern Cross met defeat.
He wishes to wander over Cuba, Mexico, and toward the West. At
Havana, he finds that the documents and articles forwarded by the
agents to Judge Hardin have been duly sent though never acknowledged.

The letters taken from Colonel Valois' body he seals in a packet.
He trusts that fate may lead him some day westward. They are too
precious to risk. He may some day tell the little lady of Lagunitas,
of the gallant father whose thoughts, before his last battle, were
only for the beloved "little one." She is confided, as a trust,
from the dying to Judge Hardin. She is surely safe in the sheltering
care of Valois' oldest friend. A "Southern gentleman."

Peyton for years can bring back the tender solemnity of Maxime
Valois' face, as he reads his charge to Hardin.

"And may God deal with you and yours, as you deal with me and mine."

The devoted father's appeal would touch a heart of stone.

The folly of not beginning active war in the West; the madness of
not seizing California at the outset; the rich prizes of the Pacific
left ungathered, for has not Semmes almost driven Yankee ships from
the sea with the Alabama, and does not Waddell, with the cockle-shell
Shenandoah, burn and destroy the entire Pacific whaling fleet?
The free-booter sails half around the world, unchallenged, after
the war. Oh, coward Knights of the Golden Circle! Fools, and blind,
to let California slip from your grasp!

Maxime Valois was right. Virginian rule ruined the Confederacy.
Too late, too late!

Had Sidney Johnston lived; had Robert E. Lee been willing to
leave sacred Virginia uncovered for a fortnight in the days before
he marshalled the greatest army the Southerners ever paraded, and
invaded the North boldly, a peace would have resulted.

Peyton thinks bitterly of the irreparable loss of Sidney Johnston.
He recalls the death of peerless Jackson. Jackson, always aggressive,
active, eager to reach for the enemy, and ever successful.

Wasted months when the prestige was with the South, the fixed
determination of Lee to keep the war in Virginia, and Davis's deadly
jealousy of any leading minds, seem to have lost the brightest
chances of a glorious success.

Peyton condemns the military court of Davis and the intrenched
pageantry of Lee's idle forces. The other armies of the Confederacy
fought, half supplied, giving up all to hold the Virginia lines.
He cannot yet realize that either Sherman or Grant might have
baffled Sidney Johnston had he lived. Lee was self-conscious of
his weakness in invasion. He will not own that Philip Sheridan's
knightly sword might have reached the crest of the unconquered
Stonewall Jackson.

Vain regret, shadowy dreams, and sad imaginings fill Colonel
Peyton's mind. The thrilling struggles of the Army of the West, its
fruitless victories, and unrewarded heroism make him proud of its
heroes. Had another policy ruled the Confederate military cabinet,
success was certain. But he is now leaving his friend's grave.

The birds are singing in the forest. As the sun lights up the dark
woods where McPherson died, into Henry Peyton's war-tried soul
enters the peace which broods over field and incense-breathing trees.
Far in the East, the suns of future years may bring happier days,
when the war wounds are healed. The brothers of the Union may find
a nobler way to reach each other's hearts than ball or bayonet.
But he cannot see these gleams of hope.

BOOK IV.

A LOST HEIRESS.--MILLIONS AT STAKE.

CHAPTER XIII.

MOUNT DAVIDSON'S MAGIC MILLIONS.--A CALIFORNIA PLUTOCRACY.--THE
PRICE OF A CRIME.

Philip Hardin's library in San Francisco is a place for quiet labors.
A spider's parlor. September, 1864, hides the enchanted interior
with deeper shades from the idle sight-seer.

Since the stirring days of 1861, after the consecutive failures of
plot, political scheme, and plan of attack, the mysterious "chief
of the Golden Circle" has withdrawn from public practice. A marked
and dangerous man.

It would be an insult to the gallant dead whose blood watered the
fields of the South, for Philip Hardin to take the "iron-clad oath"
required now of practitioners.

Respected for his abilities, feared by his adversaries, shunned
for his pro-secession views, Philip Hardin walks alone. No overt
act can be fastened on him, Otherwise, instead of gazing on Alcatraz
Island from his mansion windows, he might be behind those frowning
walls, where the l5-inch Columbiads spread their radial lines of
fire, to cross those of the works of Black Point, Fort Point, and
Point Blunt. Many more innocent prisoners toil there. He does not
wish to swell their number. Philip Hardin dares not take that oath
in open court. His pride prevents, but, even were he to offer it,
the mockery would be too patent.

A happy excuse prevents his humiliation. Trustee of the vast
estate of Lagunitas, he has also his own affairs to direct. It is
a dignified retirement.

Another great passion fills his later days. Since the wandering
Comstock and Curry, proverbially unfortunate discoverers, like
Marshall, pointed to hundreds of millions for the "silver kings,"
along Mount Davidson's stony, breast, he gambles daily. The stock
board is his play-room.

The mining stock exchange gives his maturer years the wilder
excitements of the old El Dorado.

Washoe, Nevada Territory, or the State of Nevada, the new "Silverado"
drives all men crazy. A city shines now along the breast of the
Storey County peaks, nine thousand feet above the sea. The dulness
of California's evolution is broken by the rush to Washoe. Already
the hardy prospectors spread out in that great hunt for treasure
which will bring Colorado, Idaho, and Montana, crowned aspirants,
bearing gifts of gold and silver, to the gates of the Union. The
whole West is a land of hidden treasures.

Speculation's mad fever seized on Hardin from the days of 1860.
Shares, stocks, operations, schemes, all the wild devices of hazard,
fill up his days with exciting successes and damning failures.

His name, prestige, and credit, carry him to the front. As in
the early days, his cool brain and nerve mark him as a desperate
gamester. But his stakes are now gigantic.

Secure in his mansion house, with private wires in his study,
he operates through many brokers and agents. His interrupted law
business is transferred to less prominent Southern advocates.

Philip Hardin's fine hand is everywhere. Reliable dependants,
old prospecting friends and clients, keep him informed by private
cipher of every changing turn of the brilliant Virginia City
kaleidoscope.

Hardin gambles for pleasure, for vanity, and for excitement. Led
on by his desire to stand out from the mass of men, he throws his
fortune, mixed with the funds of Lagunitas, into the maelstrom of
California Street. Success and defeat alternate.

It is a transition time. While war rages in the East, the California
merchant kings are doubling fortunes in the cowardly money piracy
known as California's secession. The "specific contract act" is
the real repudiation of the government's lawful money. This stab in
the back is given to the struggling Union by the well-fed freedom
shriekers of the Union League. They howl, in public, over their
devotion to the interests of the land.

The future railroad kings of the Pacific, Stanford, Hopkins, Crocker,
Huntington, Colton, and their allies, are grasping the gigantic
benefits flowing from the Pacific Railroad, recommended by themselves
as a war measure. Heroes.

The yet uncrowned bonanza kings are men of obscure employment, or
salaried miners working for wages which would not in a month pay
their petty cash of a day in a few years.

Quiet Jim Flood, easy O'Brien, sly Jones, sturdy Mackay, and that
guileless innocent, "Jim Fair," are toiling miners or "business
men." Their peculiar talents are hidden by the obscurity of humdrum,
honest labor.

Hands soon to sway the financial sceptre, either mix the dulcet
cocktail, swing the pick, or else light with the miner's candle
the Aladdin caves to which they grope and burrow in daily danger,
deep hidden from public view. These "silver kings" are only in
embryo.

These two groups of remarkable men, the future railroad princes,
and the budding bonanza kings, represent cunning, daring, energy,
fortitude, and the remarkable powers of transition of the Western
resident.

The future land barons are as yet merely sly, waiting schemers. They
are trusting to compound interest, rotten officials, and neglected
laws to get possession of ducal domains. The bankers, merchant princes,
and stock operators are writing their names fast in California's
strange "Libro d'oro." All is restlessness. All is a mere waiting
for the turbid floods of seething human life to settle down. In
the newer discoveries of Nevada, in the suspense of the war, the
railroads are yet only half finished, croaked at mournfully by the
befogged Solons of the press. All is transition.

It is only when the first generation of children born in California
will reach maturity in the 'eighties; only when the tide of carefully
planned migration from North and South, after the war, reaches the
West, that life becomes regular. Only when the railways make the
new State a world's thoroughfare, and the slavery stain is washed
from our flag, that civilization plants the foundations of her
solid temples along the Pacific.

There is no crystallization until the generation of mere adventurers
begin to drop into graves on hillside and by the sea. The first
gold-seekers must pass out from active affairs before the real
State is honestly builded up.

No man, not even Philip Hardin, could foresee, with the undecided
problems of 1860, what would be the status of California in ten
years, as to law, finance, commerce, or morals.

A sudden start might take the mass of the people to a new Frazer
River or another Australia. They might rush to the wilds of some
frontier treasury of nature, now unknown.

Even Philip Hardin dared not dream that humble bar-keepers would
blossom out into great bank presidents, that signatures, once
potent only on the saloon "slate," would be smiled on by "friend
Rothschild" and "brother Baring." The "lightning changes" of the
burlesque social life of Western America begin to appear. It is
a wild dream that the hands now toiling with the pick or carrying
the miner's tin dinner-pail, would close in friendship on the
aristocratic palm of H.R.H. Albert Edward, the Prince of Wales.
The "chambermaid's own" romances would not dare to predict that
ladies bred to the broom and tub or the useful omnipotent "fry
pan," would smile on duchesses, crony with princesses, or regulate
their visiting lists by the "Almanach de Gotha."

Their great magician is Gold. In power, in pleasing witchery of
potent influence; insidious flattery of pleasure; in remorseless
persecution of the penniless, all wonders are its work. Ariel,
Mephisto, Moloch, thou, Gold! King Gold! and thy brother, Silver!

While Philip Hardin speculated from his lofty eyrie, the San
Francisco hills are now covered with the unsubstantial palaces of
the first successful residents. He dared not dream that the redwood
boxes called mansions, in which the wealthy lived in the days of
'60, would give way to the lordly castles of "Nob Hill."

These castles, whether of railroad tyrant, bonanza baron, or banking
conspirator, were yet castles in the air.

Perched in lofty isolation now, they architecturally dominate
the meaner huts below. Vulgar monuments of a social upheaval which
beggars the old stories of fairy changelings, of Sancho Panza, of
"Barney the Baron," or "Monte Cristo."

In the days of '60, Philip Hardin is too busy with plot and scheme,
with daily plunging, and dreaming over the fate of Lagunitas, to
notice the social elevation of the more aspiring male and female
adventurers. The rising tide of wealth grows. Judicious use of early
gained riches, trips to Europe, furtive lessons, the necessities
of the changed station, and an unlimited cheek and astounding
adaptability change the lucky men and women whom fortune's dower
has ennobled. They are all now "howling swells."

Some never reach as high as the "Monarchs of Mount Davidson," who
were pretty high up at the start, nearly a mile and a half. In many
cases, King Midas's Court shows very fairly scattered promotions.

Society's shoddy geometry gives a short-cut for "my lady's maid"
to become "my lady." She surely knows "how to dress." The lady who
entertains well, in some cases does so with long experience as
a successful professional cook.

Some who dropped into California with another woman's husband,
forget, while rolling in their carriages, that they ever had one
of their own. Children with no legal parents have not learned the
meaning of "filius nullius." From the bejewelled mass of vigorous,
keen upstarts, now enriched by stocks, the hardy children of the
great bonanzas, rises the chorus, "Let the past rest. We have passed
the gates of Gold."

To the "newer nobility of California," is given local golden patents.
They cover modest paternal names and many shady personal antecedents.

In a land without a past, the suddenly enriched speculators reign
in mart and parlor. They rule society and the Exchange. In a great
many cases, a judicious rearrangement of marriage proves that the
new-made millionnaires value their recently acquired "old wines"
and "ancient pictures," more than their aging wives. They bring
much warmth of social color into the local breezy atmosphere of
this animated Western picture, these new arrangements of Hymen.

Hardin, plunging into the general madness of stock speculation,
destined to reign for twenty years, keeps his own counsel. He sneers
not at the households queened over by the "Doubtful Loveliness"
of the "Rearranged Aristocracy of the Pacific." He has certain
twinges when he hears the laughing girl child at play in the bowers
of his park. While the ex-queen of the El Dorado, now a marvel of
womanly beauty, gazes on that dancing child, she cannot yet see,
among the many flashing gems loading her hands, the plain circlet
of a wedding ring.

No deeper consecration than the red blood of the murdered gambler
ever sealed the lawless union of the "Chief of the Golden Circle"
with the peerless "Empress of Rouge et Noir."

Her facile moods, restrained passions, blind devotion, and
self-acquired charms of education, keep Philip Hardin strangely
faithful to a dark bond.

Luxury, in its most insidious forms, woos to dreamy enjoyment the
not guileless Adam and Eve of this hidden western Paradise.

There is neither shame nor the canker of regret brooding over these
"children of knowledge," who have tasted the clusters of the "Tree
of Life."

Within and without, it is the same. Philip Hardin is not the only
knave and unpunished murderer in high place. His "Gulnare" is not
the only lovely woman here, who bears unabashed the burden of
a hideous past. A merit is peculiar to this guilty, world-defying
pair. They seek no friends, obtrude on no external circles, and
parade no lying sham before local respectability.

It is not so with others. The bench, the forum, the highest
places, the dazzling daily displays of rough luxury, are thronged
by transformed "Nanas" and resolute climbers of the social trapeze. The
shameless motto flaunts on their free-lance banners, golden-bordered:

"Pour y parvenir."

Philip Hardin smiles, on the rare occasions when he enters the
higher circles of "society," to see how many fair faces light up,
in strange places, with a smile of recognition. How many rosy lips
are closed with taper fingers, hinting, "Don't ask me how I got
here; I AM! here!"

In his heartless indifference to the general good, he greets the
promoted "ladies" with grave courtesy. It is otherwise with the
upstart men. His pride of brain and life-long station makes him
haughtily indifferent to them. He will not grovel with these meaner
human clods.

A sardonic grin relaxes his dark visage as he sees them go forth
to "shine" in the East and "abroad."

Why should not the men of many aliases, the heroes of brawl and
murder, of theft and speculation, freely mix with the more polished
money sharks swarming in the Eastern seas of financial piracy?

"Arcades ambo!" Bonanza bullion rings truer than the paper millions
of shoddy and petroleum. The alert, bright free-lances of the
West are generally more interesting than the "shoddy" magnates or
"contract" princes of the war. They are, at least, robust adventurers;
the others are only money-ennobled Eastern mushrooms.

The Western parvenu is the more picturesque. The cunning railroad
princes have, at least, built SOMETHING. It is a nobler work than
the paper constructions of Wall Street operators. It may be jeered,
that these men "builded better than they knew." Hardin feels that
on one point they never can be ridiculed, even by Eastern magnate,
English promoter, or French financier. They can safely affirm they
grasped all they could. They left no humble sheaf unreaped in the
clean-cut fields of their work. They took all in sight.

Hardin recognizes the clean work of the Western money grabbers,
as well and truly done. The railroad gang, bonanza barons, and
banking clique, sweep the threshing floor. Nothing escapes them.

He begins to feel, in the giant speculations of 1862 and 1863, that
luck can desert even an old gamester, at life's exciting table. He
suffers enormously, yet Lagunitas's resources are behind him.

In the long fight of the street, victory perches with the strongest
battalions. Philip Hardin cannot know that men toiling by the day
in obscure places now, will yet exchange cigars with royal princes.
They will hobnob with the Hapsburgs. They will enter racing bets
in the jewelled notebooks of grand dukes. They copy the luxuries,
the inborn vices of the blue blood of Europe's crowned Sardanapalian
autocrats.

From saloon to salon, from kitchen to kirmess, from the faro table
to the Queen's drawing-room, from the canvas trousers of the miner
to Poole's creations, from the calico frock of the housemaid to
Worth's dazzling masterpieces, from making omelets to sneering at
operas, the great social lightning-change act goes on.

Philip Hardin loves his splendid home, where the foot of Hortense
Duval sinks in the tufted glories of Persia and the Wilton looms.
He does not marvel to see ex-cattle-drovers, promoted waiters,
lucky lemonade-sellers, and Pike County discoverers, buying gold
watch-chains by the pound. They boast huge golden time-pieces,
like young melons. Their diamond cluster pins are as resplendent
as crystal door-knobs.

Fair hands, fresh from the healthful contact of washing-soda, wave
recognition to him from coupe or victoria. In some cases these are
driven by the millionnaire himself, who insists on "holding the
ribbons."

The newspapers, in the recherche society columns, refer to the
grandeur of the "Gold Hill" outfit, the Virginia City "gang," the
Reese River "hummers," or the Eberhardt "crowd." These are the
Golden Horde.

These lucky children of fortune mingle with the stock-brokers, who,
resplendent in attire, and haughty of demeanor, fill the thousand
offices of speculation. They disdain the meaner element, as they
tool their drags over the Cliff Road to bathe in champagne, and
listen to the tawdry Phrynes and bedraggled Aspasias who share
their vulture feast of the moment.

It is a second descent of male and female harpies. Human nature,
loosened from long restraint by the war, has flooded the coast with
the moral debris of the conflict. It is a reign of the Bacchanals.

"After all," thinks Philip Hardin, as he sees these dazzling rockets
rise, with golden trails, into the social darkness of the Western
skies, "they are really the upper classes here. Their power of
propulsion to the zenith is inherent in themselves. If they mingle,
in time, with the aristocratic noblesse of Europe, they may infuse
a certain picturesque element." Hardin realizes that some of the
children of these millionnaires of a day will play at school with
young princes, their girls will marry titles, and adorn their smallest
belongings with excrescent coronets and coats of arms, won in the
queer lottery of marriage.

"It is well," the cold lawyer muses. "After all, many of the
aristocracy of Europe are the descendants of expert horse-thieves,
hired bravos, knights who delighted to roast the merchant for his
fat money-bags, or spit the howling peasant on their spears. Many
soft-handed European dames feel the fiery blood burning in their
ardent bosoms. In some cases, a reminder of the beauty whose easy
complaisance caught a monarch's smile and earned an infamous title.
Rapine, murder, lust, oppression, high-handed bullying, servile
slavishness in every vile abandonment, have bred up delicate,
dreamy aristocrats. Their ancestors, by the two strains, were either
red-handed marauders, or easy Delilahs."

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